"In the beginning of the war, life in Germany was not too bad. We lived in Stuttgart and it didn’t take Dad long at all to get a good Job at Mahle, where they made pistons for war machinery. Unemployment was now virtually non-existent and there was no more Depression as before. I went to kindergarten not far from our apartment in Stoeckach Srasse 66 and Mum got a job downstairs where there was a small dairy and grocery shop.

On the radio we were told how good our soldiers were. Apparently they conquered one country after another and we were winning the war without loss of life. What a lot of rubbish!

n 1942 I started School, but then the war started to intensify. When the first bombs fell over Stuttgart it frightened the shit out of everybody. We thought this can’t be for real, but it sure was, and it never stopped until the end of the war. We lived in a set of 6 storey apartment houses where the men dug tunnels from one house to the other in case one of them got hit.

Well, the front one got hit with the loss of 14 lives, and it would have been many more had it not been for the tunnels where the residents shel- tered during air strikes. Early in September 1944, the air strikes went on for hours. It was an absolutely terrifying night; hours without electricity in the cellar with Heinz crying his heart out still having to be looked after. By the morning the bombing had stopped and I ventured out to look at the damage and could not believe what I saw. Half of the oppo- site side of the street was destroyed; buildings smashed and toppled over, still burning. There were human bodies half burned and still smoulder- ing, laying in the rubble on the street amongst dead animals. The smell, the stench was shocking. I stood there trying not to vomit, not knowing what to do."

Fred was eight years old.

In the 1939-45 period the Royal Air Force (RAF) dropped 21,016 long tons of bombs on Stutttgart.

Fred Glasbrenner was born in Philadelphia, Pa, USA on 18 of June 1936 to German parents. When his proud parents went home to show their son to the family, they were caught out by WWII and forced to remain in Germany. This extract of Fred's story - "Journey of Lifetime" - gives a harrowing account of the reality of living a war.

Fred is currently writing down the story of his amazing life, titled "Journey of a Lifetime", 2015. When he was asked by Ute Haberberger to choose a song for her programme on "Memories in my Luggage" (3ZZZ German radio), Fred chose: "Jim, Jonny and Jonas" by the Hula Hawaiian Quartett.**